Google Translator Toolkit: how to use "Active"

Let’s look at how Google translator toolkit can help translators. Google translator toolkit provides main 5 sections on the left side bar: Active, Hide, Trash, Translation memories and Glossaries. I guess you would use Active, Translation memories and Glossaries most. Let’s look at Active section.


In this section, you can upload the file or add the URL to translate on Google translator toolkit.
Click “Upload” button on Active section, then you move to the next page where you can locate the file to translate on your local PC or enter the URL that you want to translate including Knol and Wikipedia™ article URL. You can specify the name of translation. This name will be used like a project name that is displayed on Active section. You can also specify source and target languages for translation. When you click the “Sharing” icon, all the instructions about adding and creating TM will be shown. The point is you can add TM to use during translation or create TM that will be automatically stored on the web space that Google provides if you don’t have any prepared TM, and this TM can be shared with other users if you want (you can select the option).
Once you click "Upload for translation” button, it goes to translation mode (I would like to call that). It shows all the information you need for translation such as statistic information, translation search result from TM, dictionary, and source texts on the left and target text on your right. The most amazing thing is that it shows automatically machine translated target texts even if you don’t add any TM.

As you can see in the above screenshot, all these translation on the target area is computer translation and the quality was way better than I have expected. Test sentences, however, was simple sentences and I am not sure how it would work on complex and long sentences. This machine translation function can be enabled or disabled on the settings page.

Google Translator Toolkit: overview

Google's new free web-based translation tool

This is amazing. Google launched its free web-based translation tool, Google trasnlator toolkit. You can use this service with only your Gmail account. It sounds like it would be easy to use it like using other Google services such as Gmail, Docs or Photos. Like I said, this is a translator toolkit not machine translation service like Google translation. Yes, yes, seeing is believing. Check out the following URL:

http://translate.google.com/toolkit/

Most people are not familier with CAT (computer-assisted translation) and MT (machine translation). A big difference between them is who translate it. CAT is performed by a translator using translation tools that help translators to translate easier, faster and more accurate. Machine translation is translation which is done by translation engine. Google translator toolkit is web-based application like other Google products and it provides a strong sharing feature with other users on the net. It also uses TM (translation memory) and term database. Currently the TM should be TMS 1.0 or later verion to be uploaded and Google provides up to 50 MB per upload. Google also provides up to 1 MB for translation and term files. Like I mentioned at the begining of this article, this service is currently free but Google has a plan to charge users whose translation exceeds high-volume thresholds.

Google translator toolkit supports following file formats:

HTML
Plain text (.txt)
Microsoft Word (.doc)
Rich-text (.rtf)
Open Office (.odt)
Wikipedia™
knol

Workflow

The workflow on Google translator toolkit is pretty much same with other CAT tools and simple. You can upload TM, glossaries and files to translate on Google translator toolkit. You can share these meterials with others if you want. Then translate the file and download the translated file. Check out the following screenshot:

Welcome

Welcome to BIN's REALM! This blog is about translation, localization, tool tips and other cultural issues. This is BIN and I am going to share any information that I know with others who need it, especially about translation and localization issues.